Re: Silindion - Present Tense

On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 02:28:49PM -0800, Elliott Lash wrote:
>  The present tense in Silindion is divided into an
> Athematic and Thematic conjugation. The Thematic
> conjugation is formed by adding a thematic present
> tense vowel to the root, followed by the endings. The
> thematic tese vowel is mostly determined by the root
> vowel, although, there are some exceptions.
>
>
> So, if the root vowel is "a" then the thematic vowel
> will be "a". If it is "e", then the thematic vowel is
> "e", etc. For the most part this rule is followed,
> except for the following cases:
[...]

Very nice. This system reminds me of Classical Greek verb
conjugations.


[...]
> Finally, if a root is dysallibic (having two
> syllables) then the 2nd vowel determines the thematic
> vowel:   namben- "to get engaged" > namben-e-
>
> The personal endings are:
> 1s   -si                  1p -na
> 2s   -l?                  2p -nta
> 3s   <described below>    3p -nto
>                           3dual/(HS 3p) -nt?
>
> Present Tense of <namben->
>        nambenesi   nambenena
>        nambenel?   nambenenta
>        namben?n    nambenento/nambenent?
Cool, I like the sound of these conjugations. :-)


[...]
> Athematic presents do not have a thematic vowel for 1
> of 2 reasons.
>
> 1) The root is a vowel stem: -ya, -a, -e, -u, -i, -o
> 2) The root is a root accented consonant stem.
>
> For these roots, the personal endings are added
> directly to the root final vowel or consonant. In the
> case of vowel stem roots, there's no problem, but in
> the case of consonant stem roots, some changes must
> take place.
This system sounds very much like Classical Greek, too. (Or is it a
more general phenomenon across inflecting natlangs? The only
significantly inflected natlang I know is Classical Greek. :-P)


[...]
> The ending for the 3rd singular is either -n, or -r.
> Originally this must have distinguished certain types
> of transitive verbs from certain types of intransitive
> verbs, although the difference between the two is
> largely lexical at the present stage of Silindion. The
> -r ending is still largely reserved for many
> intransitive verbs, although not all intransitives
> will take the -r ending and some transitives will have
> it.
Nice historical detail.


[...]
> I appologize for the length of this, but I hope you
> enjoyed it :)
[...]

Most certainly did! Thanks for sharing.


T

--
Only boring people get bored. -- JM

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